Which U.S. state means "flat water?"

In which country is the port of Dar es Salaam?

"How would I know?" one might say, and "Who cares?" But every Tuesday night, people swarm into Britannia Arms Cupertino, a British bar and restaurant on S. De Anza Boulevard, to test their knowledge of such trivia.

"I've collected facts all my life. Trivia night is a good time for me to show off," says William Nyden, a 52-year-old computer engineer. He has been coming to the restaurant's trivia night for 12 years.

Trivia night at Britannia Arms began 15 years ago. The restaurant's former manager, Tom Cauge Sr., got the idea when he visited the bars in his hometown, Blackburn, England.

"My father thought it might be fun to have trivia games in our restaurant. He came back here, and the rest is history," says Tom Cauge Jr., who has run the restaurant since his father retired five years ago.

Trivia night didn't start out as a hit. So Cauge Sr. stopped the game and resumed it with a new format and questions two years later. This time, trivia night won immediate popularity and has since become one of Cupertino's Tuesday night traditions. Now at least 60 people patronize the restaurant every Tuesday night for the game.

"It is a chance to go out with friends, to exercise our brain and to recall our arcane knowledge," says Chris Rowe, a Realtor who has played trivia at the bar for 10 years.

The originality of the questions distinguishes the trivia test of Britannia Arms Cupertino from those of other bars. While some bars buy their questions from trivia test companies, Britannia Arms writes its own questions.

Cauge Sr. used to prepare all the questions. When he retired, Steve Kraft, a regular and a trivia buff, took over the job.

"The questions have to be challenging enough, but they also have to be easy enough so people off the street can answer them," says Kraft, 42. He says the diversity of the topics is also important so everybody gets a fair chance to win.

"Thank God for the invention of computers," Kraft says. "I used to spend hours looking for questions in encyclopedias and books. Now I can write a game in five hours."

Over the years, Kraft has created a sophisticated quiz format and league system.

Kraft's quiz has four parts--questions and answers, multiple choice. The topics encompass sports, politics, geology, geography and literature. The scores for each answer depend on the difficulty of the questions.

The league is separated into four divisions according to the average points a team gets. There are 22 teams listed in the league's standings. The championship of each division receives $20 as an award. Money is also given to the team that gets the most bonus questions right.

Trivia night attracts people of different ethnicities, occupations and interests. Some teams are formed by like-minded friends or colleagues. The Mammals, for example, is made up of Apple employees while the Los Grandes Tetons play ultimate Frisbee and run on a track team. Some teams are just grouped together from among the regulars. The number of team members ranges from two to 20.

"Six or seven is about what you really want," Kraft says. "The more people you have, the worse you perform."

The teams have different strategies.

Members of the Bermuda Triangle write down their answers on a piece of paper so other teams won't hear their answers. The Killick team discusses answers in whispers. The Mammals have a magic mathematical formula for questions about numbers.

On a recent trivia night, 14 teams joined the game. The atmosphere was rowdy.

Since the San Francisco Giants played against the Los Angeles Dodgers that night, Kraft, a loyal Giants fan, served as a baseball commentator while conducting the trivia game. The Los Grandes Tetons, the youngest and biggest team that night, cheered and gave one anther high-fives every time Kraft announced that the next question was about sports, their strongest subject.

This was a night when the questions were generally more difficult.

When Kraft announced that Luxemburg is the only European country with the letter "x" in its name, Mike Golin, a Bermuda Triangle team member, murmured, "That sounds like a bad German beer."

Even Nyden, who is proud of his knowledge in geography, failed the question: "Powerscourt Falls is the highest waterfall in which country?"

"Australia," he told other members of the Killick team while twirling his waxed handlebar moustache. Wrong. Ireland is the correct answer.

At the end of the night, teams Angror What? and Work in Progress kept their championship in Division I and Division II respectively for another week, while the Mammals got $120 for getting the most points for the bonus questions.

Afterward, beer glasses and baskets of fish and chips lay empty on the tables. Only some grease was left in dishes that had contained "Bangers & Mash," the restaurant's famous British sausage and mashed potatoes plate.

"It's a fun thing to do in a bar. Instead of watching television, you can use your brain," says Sunnyvale resident Guillermo Toro-Lira, who marks the trivia night as his Tuesday routine.

By the way, about 12 percent of American men have admitted they have steered their cars with their legs. Nebraska means "flat water." Dar es Salaam is the main port of Tanzania.

Britannia Arms Cupertino, 1087 De Anza Blvd. in San Jose, hosts a trivia test every Tuesday night. For more information, call 408.252.7262.